Norway Landscape Wound Commemorating Utoya Mass Shooting

Finalizing the Norway’s July 22 memorial site competition, Director of KORO/Public Art Norway Svein Bjørkås decided that Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg would build three July 22 Memorial sites in Norway. In order to commemorate the attacks in Oslo and Utoya (a small island outside of the capital), the artist presented a proposal to cut a gap into the Sørbråten peninsula, which faces Utoya.

The jury for Public Art Norway said Dahlberg’s idea to make a physical incision in the landscape was as powerful as it gets: “The void that is created evokes the sense of sudden loss combined with the long-term missing and remembrance of those who perished. The proposal is radical and brave, and evokes the tragic events in a physical and direct manner”. With the names of the victims written on the flat vertical stone surface of the other side, the cut is said to be an acknowledgement of what is forever irreplaceable. Visitors here will be guided down a pathway through into a tunnel that leads to the “wound”. The cut will be excavated and moved to Oslo, where it will be part of a second memorial. The installations are scheduled to be completed by July 22, 2015